You've Got to Let Go
by RainyDaysAnyways
Summary: Where do you take your little brother the day before his first Reaping? The woods, of course. One-shot pre-HG AU in which Katniss and Gale aren't the only ones outside the fence. Written for Day 2 of Prompts in Panem's Everlark Week Challenge, focusing on Peeta's family.


"I thought you said you knew where you were going."

"Relax, it's gotta be up over the next hill."

"I told you we should have gone along the creek. Have you even been there before?"

"Shut up, dumbass, the kid'll hear you. He's freaked out enough already."

My brother is right. I _am_ freaked out. Scared shitless, to borrow one of Broa's favorite phrases.

We are outside the fence. I've never been outside the fence before. And from what I'm hearing, it sounds like my brothers haven't either.

Proj turns and flashes that trademark golden Proja Mellark smile, the one that drives the girls wild and has even the teachers eating out of his hands. "Almost there, buddy."

I look down at my feet. If I'd had any idea I was going to be marched through the woods for 37 minutes and counting—I know, because I decided at the last minute to grab my grandfather's old pocketwatch off the nightstand—I would have taken more care in selecting my footwear. Instead, with one brother pulling a too-small baseball cap over my head and the other hissing at me to _"Hurry, up, we haven't got all day!"_, I'd just fished around under my bed and grabbed the pair nearest at hand. I make a note that if I ever let my stupid brothers talk me into going out into the woods again, I will not wear wrestling shoes.

Despite Proja's words, nothing about the journey thus far reassures me that we are almost there.

_Proj had made sure he touched the fence before he sent me over. "You're sure it's off?" he asked Broa for the tenth time. We'd stood there for several minutes listening for electricity and hadn't heard anything. But then, we didn't really have any idea what electricity sounded like._

_Broa made a show of rolling his eyes. "I told you, it's off today so they can patch it up before the Rea— before tomorrow. Shel's cousin Mark knows the guy at the Justice Building who saw the papers about it."_

_But for all this bravado, Broa hadn't reached out to check the metal coil. Proj did it, because Proj is the oldest, and we all just expect that he does things like this, things to protect the rest of us._

_So Proj went over first, and he was down there on the other side, waiting to catch me. I was frozen atop the fence, one foot on either side of the precipice, certain the current was going to come back on at any second, certain I was going to break my neck on the way down, certain that even if I survived either of those injuries Mom was going to kill me for the three-inch rip I'd torn in my pants on the climb up. I was unable to decide if I was more terrified of jumping down to Proj, to the untold dangers that lay beyond District 12, or of turning around and crawling back down to Broa's teasing. So I teetered there, unable to look anywhere but down the toes of my wrestling boots where they poked through the grid of the chain link._

"_Okay. Now just pull your other foot around and jump," Proj instructed._

_My arms had begun to shake from the effort of holding myself up as the fence bent first this way, then that, under my weight. My heart raced, and sweat beaded up on my brow. I couldn't look down._

"_Nice and steady," Proj reassured me, as I tentatively drew my right leg higher._

"_Hurry the hell up before the power comes on or someone sees us!" Typical Broa encouragement._

_I got my leg around, but when the time came to untangle my fingers from the wire, I couldn't bring myself to do it._

_I don't know why I let that, of all things, scare me. In just over 24 hours, my name will be put in a bowl, __along with the names of my brothers and friends and our classmates, and one of us will be selected to die before a live television audience. Maybe I figured that if I didn't ever come down from the fence, time would somehow freeze, and I wouldn't have to face the day that's hung over me like a specter every day of my 12 years. _

_All three of us Mellarks in the Reaping._

_It was easier to be afraid of the fence. So I clung to it for dear life, my palms beginning to burn where the wire cut into them._

"_Peeta, listen to me!" Proja called up from below. "Are you listening? … Tell me that you hear my voice."_

"_I hear you," I said, through gritted teeth._

"_Peeta…" It was the same gentle tone Proj used with me after one of Mom's incidents. "Peeta, you've got to let go!" Then, more softly, "Say something to him, Broa, this was your brilliant idea."_

"_Jump, dumbass."_

"_Come on, Bro, something helpful!" Proja scolded._

"_Uh, fine, what Proj said. Tomorrow's your first—well, you know—and you've gotta be a man about it, so you might as well start now by getting your scrawny ass down before I start shaking the fence. SO JUST LET GO!"_

_My brothers rarely agree on anything. When they do, I figure I should listen._

_I closed my eyes and counted it down in my head. Three… two… one…. _

_I let go, and I jumped, and, for a moment, I was weightless._

I still don't know where they're taking me.

I've grown almost two inches since the end of school, but my legs are still so much shorter than theirs, and it's hard to keep up. From the snatches of whispered conversation that drift back to me, I get the sense that it's someplace Broa may know from when he ran away for several days last September after a particularly bad argument with Mom. I've never heard Dad cry the way he cried when Deputy Darius came back saying they'd found no sign, that there was nothing to do but wait. It was worse even than Reaping mornings.

I think about tomorrow, and bile rushes up into my throat. Not just for myself—though I am _scared shitless_ about the possibility that my name will be called—but for everyone I care about. Two years ago it was Proj's friend Karst. He didn't make it past the initial bloodbath. Dad had instructed me to cover my eyes. But then I heard Proj screaming wildly, beating the television set with his fists, and I couldn't just sit there with my eyes closed. I hate every Games, but I _especially_ hated that year. And tomorrow, for the first time, I'll be there, standing alongside Proja and Broa in the crowd of potential Tributes.

We're already over the fence, I think desperately. We could stay out here. Run. Live in the woods.

But the logical side of me knows the Peacekeepers would find us before the day was through. I heard a few years ago there was a family from the Seam with triplets, 17 years old all with tesserae to their names, that tried to hide in one of the tunnels in the mines. No one has seen or heard from them or their kin since.

Even if we could stay outside the fence, we wouldn't last long. We're baker's sons, and I'm pretty sure there are no magical flour and yeast trees growing out here. All we've got in the bag Proj packed is a flask of water and four day-old dinner rolls. He'd packed a half-dozen to start, but it was supposed to be my day to sleep in, and I hadn't eaten any breakfast, and I wasn't used to walking this far, and Proj felt sorry for me.

"I thought you said we were supposed to go east." Proja's voice intrudes on the _clomp clomp clomp_ of our footsteps.

I hear Broa grunt. "Yeah, we are going on east."

"No we're not," Proj hisses. "We should be walking _toward _the sunrise to go east, but the sun's coming up over _there_."

"Close enough," Broa says dismissively.

Despite his reassurances to me, I can tell from Proja's tone that he's beginning to get worried. And it makes me worried when something rattles Proj.

I decide I need to pipe up. "Where are you taking me again?"

Broa turns to me, walking backwards up a gentle rise. "You'll see." He has always liked secrets.

"We've been walking for"—I check the pocketwatch—"an hour and ten minutes now. You said it would be like half an hour. Dad's going to expect me in the bakery at eight thirty." I sigh. "So just tell me."

I stop marching and fold my arms across my chest. I plant my ridiculous red wrestling boots firmly in a clump of what I hope isn't poison ivy. Refusal to walk, the final defense of the youngest child.

Broa rolls his eyes, but I can tell Proj is about to crack.

He looks at me, then back at Broa. "We should tell him."

"Fine," Broa says, but he's clearly not fine giving up privileged information. "I found an old shack out here one time. That's where we're going."

"You brought me all the way out here, _over the fence_, to go to some old shack?" My voice cracks at the end.

"Not just a shack," Proj says. "There's a lake too…. There_ is_ a lake, right Bro?"

"Yeah, there's a lake." Broa starts walking again. I don't think about it but my feet move to follow him. "We can go for a swim, maybe catch some fish."

"Fish come from District 4," I protest. "Like flour comes from District 11. That's like, second grade stuff."

"Bullshit," Broa says. "Half the stuff they tell you is complete bullshit." But Broa's a pretty big bullshitter himself, and I doubt he could even know. I wait for Proja to jump in and take my side, but he doesn't say anything.

We trudge along, over the hill and back down into a little gully with a creek at the bottom and up the other side. I glance at the watch again.

"Seven fifteen," I announce pointedly.

"Don't worry about it," Proj calls back. "We cleared it with Dad, he knows you're with us."

It goes without saying that it's not really Dad I'm worried about. But if Proj says he cleared it with Dad, then Dad will think of a way to distract Mom. Maybe set some supplies out on the counter and make it look like we brought them from the train station. But maybe Dad thinks we are at the train station. No way in a million years would he be okay with us going outside the fence.

This may be the last time I'm ever out here. I decide to look around and try to enjoy it. There are little flowers everywhere—on the ground, in the bushes—more than I've ever seen in my life. I pick out a couple to try next time we get a cake order.

Proj starts whistling the theme song from one of the silly Capitol television shows, and suddenly the song is all around us. The effect is stunning, and we all stop to listen. "Mockingjays," I whisper. I'd heard rumors about them, but I'd never seen one in person. They are all around us, perched in the trees. I crane my neck to try to count them.

We keep walking. With the sun higher in the sky, the air is heating up. There's sweat dripping down my neck and pooling at my collarbone. I start thinking that a swim sounds pretty good.

If we ever actually find the place.

"Broa? Did you draw a map or anything that would help you find it again?" I shout.

"Dummy," Broa says, "like I'd make a map for the Peacekeepers to fi—"

And then, mid-sentence, he's gone.

"Broa!" Proj and I rush to the spot he'd been standing. He's there, but he's on the ground, trying to untangle something that looks like wire from around his feet. I kneel to get a better look at it.

"What ha—?" Proj begins to ask, but he's interrupted by an unfamiliar voice.

"You're trespassing."

We look up and see a figure step out from the trees about ten yards ahead of us.

He's tall, much taller than Proja even, though his features suggest he's only a couple years older than I am. He has that hungry Seam look. His shirt is practically falling off his shoulders. But I see that he's got a good quarry of game—rabbits, by the look of the feet—hanging off his belt.

He has a bow, and the string is pulled taught, and there's an arrow pointed right at us.

Proja drops Broa's pant leg, which he's been trying to help untangle from whatever it's caught in, and raises his hands in the air. "Whoa… easy there. We're not armed, we mean no harm."

But Broa is less diplomatic. "What the hell, Hawthorne?" he spits.

"I said, you're trespassing," the boy repeats. He and Broa must be in the same class at school, but the recognition doesn't make him any less hostile.

"You're one to talk! It's Capitol land, not yours, so unless you've got a Peacekeeper badge, you can take your bloody arrow and shove it up your—"

Proja jumps in. "I think what my brother, _whose judgment seems affected by his recent fall_, is trying to say is that it seems we're _all_ on the wrong side of the fence here."

The boy takes a few steps forward. His grey eyes narrow. "Yeah, but you're the ones who are going to get caught if you don't pipe down. Crashing through the forest like a herd of elephants."

"And what do you care if we get caught?" I think Broa's words are a little ridiculous, considering that he's already been caught in what appears to be this boy's snare.

"I only _care_," the boy—Hawthorne, I guess—lingers on the word, drawing out the sarcasm, "that you're scaring off all the game."

I am relieved to see the tip of the arrow drop away from my brother's heart.

Hawthorne shakes his head. "What the hell do you even think you're doing out here, Mellark?"

Broa grunts and motions toward me. "First Reaping. Thought a little adventure might distract him."

The boy's laughter is hollow. "The Reaping isn't sport enough for you merch?" I never thought the fact that our family owns a shop in town could be turned into an insult, but that's how he says it, the same disdainful way Mom uses 'Seam brat.' "Try taking out some tesserae next year if you're looking for adventure."

I see Proj's face go a little red. He thinks I don't know that he's taken tesserae the past two years, but I do. It's kind of obvious that the rough flour we sometimes use at home isn't, as Mom claims, just a bad shipment that would cost more to send back to D11 than it's worth.

"Looks like you may not be going anywhere for awhile," Hawthorne continues, the smile curling on his lips confirmation that it is his snare Broa is caught in. "But at least tell me where you're headed on this little adventure so I can stay the hell away and have half a shot at putting a decent meal on the table tonight."

"Actually, maybe you can help us." Proja clearly doesn't have the same read on this boy that I do. "We're trying to find a lake, an old farm pond by the ruins of a cabin."

Hawthorne shakes his head. "Uh uh. I don't know of any lake… and I _would_ know," he adds proudly.

Proj looks to Broa to chime in, but I can see that Bro would sooner die than admit that we're lost. He turns away as Proj continues to plead our case. "It's supposed to be three or four miles east of the meadow from the fence. We should have reached it by now, but I think we've been walking in circles. Sure you don't know it?"

Hawthorne tilts his head back toward the trees. "Hey Catnip, Blondie here swears there's a lake nearby."

When she steps out of the trees, I swear my heart stops beating.

I've been trying not to think about her. I'm always trying not to think about her, but this summer I really mean it. With her dad gone and her sister to care for, I'm certain she's taken out the full tesserae for their family. It's her first Reaping too, and I know her name's not in there as many times as Proj's, but it's still too many.

So I've been trying not to think about her. But that doesn't make her any less stunning. I try not to notice how the dappled morning light shines off her dark hair, or how her eyes are the steel color of mockingjay wings, or how perfectly at home her hand looks curled around her bow.

My pants suddenly feel uncomfortably tight, and my face burns. I try to think of a million other things besides her. I shift so it's not quite so obvious. I don't think this is the kind of distraction my brothers intended.

When I was seven, I informed Proja that I was going to grow up and marry Katniss Everdeen. He told me that was great, but I'd better not ever say anything about it around Mom. Broa figured it out a few years later when he caught me staring at her through the bakery window on the Sundays she would tagalong with her father on trades. She doesn't come into town much anymore, not since the accident. I guess she must be busy out here, hunting.

With him. Whoever he is. They look alike. I try to convince myself they are cousins.

Broa's elbow catches me in the rib, and I realize I've been staring.

"Lake?" The sound of her voice shocks my heart back to life. "Nope, don't know anything about it."

But I caught something, something she didn't mean for any of us—not even him—to see. It was like a cloud passed over her face. A moment of panic.

I know that she's lying.

But I won't say anything. I never say anything. I've been in love with Katniss Everdeen for seven years, and in all that time I've never gotten up the courage to actually speak to her. Not even after what passed between us last year, when I thought my heart would burst from all the things I wanted to say.

"Really, no lake?" Proj looks like he's ready to kill Broa.

"Guess the adventure's over," Hawthorne crows. "Better get home to mommy and daddy before the power comes back on."

Katniss is kinder. "Keep the sun on your right. You'll be back at the meadow in less than an hour." I don't miss the way her fingers reach to tug at the bottom of the boy's sleeve. "Come on, Gale," she says when he doesn't immediately follow. He's still watching Broa wrestle with the snare. "We'll reset it on the way back."

And then they're gone, just as quietly as they appeared.

I stare off in the direction where I last saw her, where she faded into the trees.

I've been trying all summer not to think of her, but it's no use. I know there's nothing else I'll be able to think of when they reach to draw the first name from the Reaping bowl. _Not her_, I beg whatever forces out there might be listening. _Not her. Not her. Not her. _

She could run away, survive out here. She's tough. She can hunt. She knows these woods. But she has her sister and her mother at home, and I know she'll never do it.

Proja must be able to read my thoughts, because I hear him say softly, "You've got to let go."

Broa, who has finally freed himself, reaches his hands out for us to help him up. "Yeah, Peeta. What Proj said." He ruffles my hair. It's a brotherly touch that I'd never expect from him. "Just let go."


End file.
